You've seen how decorative stamping can add beauty and drama to concrete floors, sidewalks, driveways, and other horizontal surfaces. Wouldn't it be great if you could use the same process to enhance vertical surfaces, such as the walls inside your home or building, a fireplace front, or an exterior privacy wall?

Now you can with a new cementitious wall overlay material called Flex-C-Ment. Only about one-third the weight of a conventional cementitious overlay, the material can be applied directly over primed drywall, wood, masonry, and other vertical surfaces, indoors and out. And it's specially formulated to go on thickly so you can create various rock textures and other designs using stamps or hand-sculpting techniques.

"With the Flex-C-Ment wall mix, you can create a deep relief, building the wall overlay out 3 inches or more without any sagging," says Andy Yoder of Yoder & Sons LLC, the inventor of the product. Yoder has been experimenting with specialty cements and concrete materials for more than 30 years. His innovative overlay products include a fiber-reinforced cement-based floor system that can be applied over wood, vinyl, and other surfaces and a countertop overlay that goes over existing formica or plywood. But the wall overlay material, which he perfected a few years ago, is the first product of its kind for vertical surfaces and offers more flexibility than manufactured stone.

"You can do more with Flex-C-Ment than manufactured stone because you can make the stone patterns any size and shape you want," says Yoder. "The material takes the impression of stamps well and is easy to sculpt or carve. You can also work it around corners and fit it into narrow areas. When compared with manufactured stone, our product costs 20% to 40% less to install."

Flex-C-Ment wall overlays also are fire-resistant, weather-resistant, and waterproof. And mineral pigments can be applied to the surface to duplicate the warm earth-tone colors of natural stone or rock. The result is a remarkably realistic stone-look facade that will last for decades.